By Satyaki Chakraborty 

 

 

The United States is finally facing a big isolation from its supporting countries over its continuing backing to the war crimes of Israeli defence forces in the Gaza strip. The Biden Government faced an international condemnation on Tuesday night after its representative vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution demanding an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza. What was significant was that even, Britain, a close US ally in the present US backing to Israel in the Gaza war, abstained in the vote, but all of the remaining 13 security council members backed the resolution, reflecting the strong support from countries around the globe for ending the war. France, a leading member of NATO was among the countries supporting the UN resolution. The latest veto comes at a time when Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza has led to the deaths of over 29,500 Palestinians and over 69,000 injured since October 7. Of the dead, 12,500 are children. The Prime Minister, Netanyahu, has announced that the ground attack on the last remaining city in Gaza, Rafah, will begin soon. Rafah is in the southernmost tip of Gaza and the area is crammed with 1.4 million people, most of them had to take refuge there after fleeing northern and central Gaza. The United Nations has warned that an attack on Rafah will be catastrophic and have devastating consequences for the civilian population.

 

The United States has been, of late, expressing concern at the mounting Palestinian casualties and has been asking Israel not to launch the attack on Gaza. Yet, when a resolution, which could help to stop the fighting, is sought to be adopted in the UN Security Council, the United States scuttles such a move. This is in keeping with the doubletalk that President Biden and his administration have been indulging in, in the past few weeks – make noises about the tremendous toll of civilian lives in Gaza and at the same time provide a shield for Israel to continue carrying on its crimes against humanity. The war between the Hamas militants and Israel started on October 7 last year following sudden attack by Hamas on Israeli positions and killing both Israeli soldiers as also taking hostages. The Israel retaliated. Many countries decried the Hamas action at that time, but Israel continued with its barbaric killing of the civilian population in the Gaza strip declaring that they would not stop the war till a single Hamas militant was alive. The entire objective is to do ethnic cleansing by driving out the Palestinians from the Gaza strip. Since October 7, more than 1300 Israeli soldiers have been killed .The difference is that while the Hamas militants killed mostly the Israeli soldiers, the Israelis targeted the Palestinian civilians including the women and children. Earlier also the US vetoed the UN resolution but this time, the support in favour of UN resolution was widespread.

 

China’s UN envoy Zhang Jun expressed “strong disappointment and dissatisfaction” with the veto by Washington. The envoy said that the US veto sends a wrong message pushing the situation in Gaza into a more dangerous one. The objection to ceasefire by the US is nothing but a green light to Israel to continue slaughter, he said. Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermudez also blasted the US, saying that by blocking the ceasefire call, US officials made themselves “accomplices of this genocide of Israel against Palestine.” There was further criticism of the US veto from France, Norway Russia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian Authority, among others. It was the third US rejection of a security council resolution demanding a ceasefire in Gaza. US ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield however claimed that the resolution, tabled by Algeria, would “negatively impact” sensitive negotiations on a hostage deal and a pause in fighting for at least six weeks. Across Gaza, Israel’s killing spree continued, with at least 67 Palestinian lives lost in the last two days .Aid group Doctors Without Borders said that two people had been killed when a shelter housing its staff in the Gaza Strip was struck during an Israeli operation in an area where Palestinians have been told to seek shelter.

 

The World Food Programme (WFP) announced a pause in food and aid deliveries to northern Gaza on Tuesday after its drivers faced gunfire and violence from desperate residents swarming the lorries. The UN agency said that one in six children under the age of two were acutely malnourished and people are dying of hunger-related causes. “In these past two days, our teams witnessed unprecedented levels of desperation,” the WFP said. While a leading BRIC nation South Africa has taken Israel to the International Court of Justice for war crimes and the ICJ strongly condemned the Israeli killings and urged it to take immediate action to stop that, Brazilian President LuizInacio “Lula” da Silva recalled his country’s ambassador to Israel on Monday. This followed Israel saying that Lula would not be welcome in their country until he apologised for comments he made over the weekend that compared Israel’s assault on Palestinians in Gaza to the Holocaust. Israel’s Foreign Minister Israel Katz described Lula’s comments as a “very serious anti-semitic attack.” The Brazilian President told the African Union summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on Sunday that “what is happening in the Gaza Strip and to the Palestinian people hasn’t been seen in any other moment in history. (IPA)